Faye and Joe (Moo Lock, 武樂) GOCK came to New Zealand as refugee children at the start of Second World War. Throughout their career as market gardeners, they had introduced innovative ideas that pioneered some practices of the industry and they were acknowledged in 2013 and received the horticulture industry’s highest honour, the Bledisloe Cup. Consequently, Joe was awarded the QSM (Queen's Service Medal) in 2015.

In 1968, when Faye and Joe moved to their current home in Auckland, Fay’s parents gave them a mirror ornament with an imprint of a Chinese motto of ‘be happy and be satisfied with the daily living’ [兮樂且安]. Since then, the mirror has been hanging high on the wall in their lounge for half a century. For me, the mirror is a portrait of their parents and therefore I proposed to Faye and Joe to take it down for a ‘family’ photograph with their parents. In this photograph, I perceive a contemplating couple who tender for each other and are immersed in a state of ‘spiritual wandering’ [神游] with their parents, thanking them for their blessing that they find peace and are living a very ‘satisfied and humble’ life in the mundane and chaotic world.

Joe’s father GOCK Loy Fat[1] [郭來發] is a market gardener with an entrepreneurial mind. He scratched a Chinese auspicious blessing of ‘Kung hei fat choy’ [恭喜發財], which literally blesses someone to earn a fortune, on separate pumpkins to increase the sale during Chinese New Year. Customers would have to purchase the whole line of four pumpkins to make up the blessing. I am very much amazed by the marketing strategy and requested Joe to plant me some pumpkins in which I etched Joe’s belief in Chinese ‘Whatever you dream can become your reality’ [心想事成, Sum seng see sing], which has constantly motivated his innovative thoughts, alongside with his father’s sale pitch ‘Kung hei fat choy’ for a photograph to echo the ‘family’ portrait that I took of them.